82
" Forget the buildings and the monuments. Let the softness of dark come in, all those light-years between stars and planets. Cities were the works of men but the earth before and after those cities, outside and beneath and around them, was the dream of a sleeping leviathan--it was god sleeping there and dreaming, the same god that was time and transfiguration. From whatever dreamed the dream at the source, atom or energy, flowed all the miracles of evolution--tiger, tiger burning bright, the massive whales in the deep, luminescent specters in their mystery. The pearls that were their eyes, their tongues that were wet leaves, their bodies that were the bodies of the fantastic.
Spectacular bestiaries of heaven, the limbs and tails of the gentle and the fearsome, silent or raging at will . . . they could never be known in every detail and they never should be. "
― Lydia Millet , How the Dead Dream
83
" Don’t you dare say these times are hollow
Just because there are storms raging by.
Just lay low on your pillow,
Close your eyes and say goodbye
To the world that you lived in today.
Let your dreams carry you away;
You lived a nightmare all through the day,
It is time to dream, so don’t delay.
You searched for a reason to live,
Yes darling, you searched everywhere.
You had to push, you had to strive,
It is time now to get some air.
You searched in all that is outside,
It is time now to look inside,
Cause that is where you’ll find
A reason worth keeping in your mind.
These dreams are not an escape, darling,
You need time to see past the lies that blind you.
It is time for you to start running
To those things that are true.
So, don’t you dare say these nights are hollow,
Just because there are storms raging by.
Just lay low on your pillow
And lose yourself in this lullaby. "
― Melita Tessy , Battle of the Spheres: Crust, Mantle and Core
88
" She was not at the concert any more. She looked around the rustic room, blinking. What the hell?The singer had her in his arms still. There was no balcony between them now.His hands slid into her hair, keeping her head still. " Not yet," he begged, sliding his lips down her throat, nuzzling her jaw. " There's time yet, Toireasa," he murmured. " Time to say fare thee well properly,." " We should have returned to Ireland, Breandan," she whispered, as he loosened the ties on her gown and dropped it from her shoulders. The words came to her naturally, even as a tiny voice was raging in her mind, " What on earth are you saying, Taylor?" But that voice was being drowned out by the pure sensuousness he was stirring in her. "
91
" And then, without any warning at all, he presses his lips against mine. As his mouth covers my own, I find myself reeling, as if I have been tipped backward and am falling, falling, so that even the stars in the sky are spinning. His lips are warm and soft, the unrelenting pull of his desire for me as strong as the pull of the waves against the sand. It is not like practicing with Ismae, or even Sybella. It is not like any of the first kisses I have imagined over the years. It is far, far better and more wondrous, and yet terrifying as well, like one of the raging storms that pound against the convent walls in the winter, threatening to breach its defenses. So too does this kiss threaten something deep within me that I cannot even name. "
95
" They could tell the whole hateful story of it, set forth in the inner soul of a city in which honor and justice, women's bodies and men's souls, were for sale in the market-place, and human beings writhed and fought and fell upon each other like wolves in a pit; in which lusts were raging fires, and men were fuel, and humanity was festering and stewing and wallowing in its own corruption. Into this wild-beast tangle these men had been born without their consent, they had taken part in it because they could not help it; that they were in jail was no disgrace to them, for the game had never been fair, the dice were loaded. They were the swindlers and thieves of pennies and dimes, and they were being trapped and put out of the way by the swindlers and thieves of millions of dollars. "
― Upton Sinclair , The Jungle
100
" Eventually, many years later, I came to see him the way everyone else saw him—a nice guy who, despite all the damage he did to us, wasn’t a bad man, not inherently bad, anyway. He just wasn’t very bright, and was in over his head on almost every level of life. He was capable of only so much and not a drop more, and because he seemed so harmless and lost, people not only liked him, they protected him.
My mother, despite her poverty, left the opposite impression. She left no doubt that she was psychologically tough and mentally sharp, and because of that the Wozniaks disliked her.
And that was another difference between my mother and father. My father was a whiner, a complainer, a perpetually unhappy man unable to comprehend the simple fact that sometimes life is unfair. My mother never complained, and yet her poverty-stricken life was miserable. She never carried on about the early death of her raging alcoholic mother, or the father who raped her, or of a diet dictated by the restrictions of food stamps. "
― John William Tuohy , No Time to Say Goodbye: A Memoir of a Life in Foster Care
